Nagisa had arrived carrying two large insulated containers and a full set of opinions.
"I genuinely don't understand your business model," he said, setting the containers down and looking at Jude with the expression of a man confronting an obvious waste of potential. "You set up for half a day, sell out, and close. How do you expect to make real money doing that?"
"The stall sold out," Jude said. "That's not a failure, that's the definition of success."
"Where is your ambition? Where is your fighting spirit?" Nagisa tapped one container. "And more importantly — where are the rest of the buns? You said you were opening today."
"I said I was thinking about opening today."
"The group chat has forty people in it waiting on your location."
Jude rolled his eyes. "You people track me down like I'm a world boss respawning on a timer. You bought an entire pot of kakuni the day before yesterday. A whole pot. If you'd been eating it three times a day you wouldn't have run out for a week."
Nagisa waved this away. "First of all: one pot of kakuni for two dozen hungry students is not 'a week's supply.' It's a 'three-day miracle if everyone shows restraint.' Which we did not." He paused. "It was gone by the second morning, technically."
"How?"
"Because I made the mistake of bringing it back to the dormitory while it was still warm." Nagisa's expression took on the thousand-yard quality of a man replaying a traumatic memory. "I walked through the door and everyone just — smelled it. Immediately. Like animals. I had the containers out of my hands before I could explain that I'd been planning to ration it."
He leaned against the cart.
"Central City has a lot of international students. Japanese, Korean, others. Most of them are surviving on fried chicken and burger because the vegetables here cost three times what they're worth and the only Japanese food in a twenty-block radius is one sushi place that would make your grandmother cry. We've all been teaching ourselves to cook with limited results." He spread his hands. "Then someone smells an actual braised pork bun from three floors away and suddenly the entire building is involved."
"I made forty people sign an emergency 'communal property' agreement with my hand being held at the time. That's not consent, that's coercion. I would like it on the record that I objected."
Jude looked at him for a moment, then looked at the steamer basket beside the cart.
He lifted the lid.
The steam rose in a column, carrying with it the smell of wheat dough and rendered fat and something that was not quite either — the particular smell of filled buns that have been proofing correctly and have gone into the steamer at exactly the right moment. Through the rising cloud: two dozen round, white buns, their pleats stained golden where the filling had seeped through during cooking.
The fillings had been his own calculation. Ground pork with rehydrated shiitake, seasoned with soy and mirin. Chive and soft-scrambled egg. Pork and spring onion with ginger. And one option he'd felt was obviously necessary: a miso-braised tofu filling for the people who'd been away from home long enough to start craving something that wasn't meat.
Nagisa stared into the steamer basket. His mouth moved but no sound came out.
"I've got braised pork and shiitake, chive and egg, pork and spring onion, and miso tofu," Jude said.
Nagisa grabbed his arm with both hands.
"You," he said, voice thick with emotion, "are saving lives."
"That might be slightly dramatic."
"Without you, we will fall apart."
"Whether the 'we' you're referring to is the student group or your digestive system is genuinely unclear."
"Found it! He's here! This is the cart from the group chat!"
Three people came around the corner at a near-run, each holding an insulated thermos. Jude looked at Nagisa with the expression of a man who already knew the answer to his question.
"Did you invite reinforcements?"
Nagisa looked equally surprised. "That wasn't me."
Jude looked at the newcomers. The newcomers looked at the steamer basket with undisguised longing.
"How much for the buns?"
"Do the fillings matter to you?"
"Honestly? No. Someone in the group said your kakuni was incredible, so the bar is already set. Whatever's in the bun will be fine."
Nagisa turned to look at the newcomers with an expression of offended territorial concern. Someone talked. There's a leak. He'd been the one to find this stall first, and now there were competitors.
"Five dollars each," Jude said. "They're generous — one is a small meal, two is a full one."
"I'll take — how many do you have?"
Jude opened his mouth, thought carefully about the exact phrasing of his answer, and chose not to invite disaster by saying as many as you want. "I'll split the cart between both groups. About a hundred and forty dollars' worth each. Take it or leave it."
Both groups took it. In under ten minutes, the steamer basket was empty and both sets of insulated containers were full and being carried away at speed.
The second group, on their way out, turned back. "What neighborhood are you in this afternoon?"
"Home," Jude said. "Resting. I made three hundred buns this morning and I'm done."
"Tomorrow?"
"Probably."
The three of them — Jude, Nagisa, and the departing group — were still sorting out the geometry of the handoff when a fourth party arrived.
Lisa Snart came around the corner with the easy confidence of someone who had been looking for the cart and expected to find it.
"There you are. I checked three streets." She looked at the cart, the empty steamer, the departed backs of the other two groups. "I heard you had something new today."
"Nikuman," Jude said. "Japanese handcrafted breakfast buns. Braised pork, shiitake, chive and egg — also fine for lunch or dinner, I'm not strict about timing."
"I'll take four."
"They're sold out. Completely. Both groups." He nodded toward the departing figures. "You could ask them if they'd part with any, but I wouldn't get your hopes up."
Lisa Snart turned her full attention toward the two groups of students disappearing down the street, each clutching their insulated containers like assets in a hostile acquisition. She was blond, she was striking, and she was clearly accustomed to that combination solving most logistical problems.
The students pulled their thermoses closer and looked at their shoes.
Lisa turned back.
"How early do I need to show up tomorrow?"
"Earlier than them," Jude said, nodding after the departing groups.
She looked at the empty steamer basket for a moment with the focused expression of a woman recalibrating her schedule.
"Fine," she said. "I'll be here."
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